They set off away from Pavisse and into the wilds. A steady breeze brought cooler air from the north. It seemed to quieten the voices in Rafe’s head, but they were not calm. They were waiting.
Tim Lebbon
Dusk
Chapter 16
THEY RODE WAYabove the clouds, seeing nothing of the world below, and yet Lenora knew that they were moving in the right direction. It was growing steadily warmer, for a start. And the hate in her heart was swelling at the smell of Noreela.
The hawks mostly floated, needing only an occasional sweep of their webbed tentacles or a blast from their gas sacs to remain afloat. The Krotes sat in their saddles, ate, slept, called to one another, stared up at the dark blue sky or down at the tops of the cloud cover. Occasionally the clouds parted to reveal more of the same: sea, and more sea, but now without the white speckles of ice floes. That meant that with every second they flew, Noreela was closer.
Lenora listened for her almost-daughter. The thought of that voice sounding again scared her, because it had been three hundred years, and that was too long for a mother and daughter to stay apart. And yet it excited her too. While the voice of the shade could never be the same, it would only encourage her in the fighting that was to come. She would serve the Mages as well as she had for centuries, and when the time came, she would serve herself. Robenna may well not even be there anymore, but if it was then the descendants of those who had driven her out would be living there. She would enjoy her moment of revenge.
As her hawk drifted onward, Lenora caught a glimpse of the sea between the clouds far below, and she remembered the last time her foot had touched Noreelan soil.
THE MACHINE MOVEDon to other Krotes, its rider reddened with pure rage and bloodlust. He had left Lenora for dead and she thought perhaps he was right. She fell back, batting at the fire that ate into her shoulder and neck, and the sea welcomed her in as she faded away from the world.
She kicked. Her feet touched the beach, pushing her back.
Mother, said the shade that would have been her daughter. And then it faded away.
She kicked again, but her feet touched nothing.
TIME PASSED, ANDit could have been minutes or centuries.
Lenora awoke with a new awareness of the world. She could smell cooking flesh, but also the taint of time on the breeze. She could taste blood in her mouth, her own and others’, but she could also taste the craving for retribution, a bitter tang like the infection from a rotting tooth. She saw the rigging of a huge ship above her, reaching for the sky with sails and ropes that even now were bursting into flame; and then a familiar face leaning in close, smiling, her utter beauty complemented by the blood spattered on her face and the gore hanging like ringlets in her tangled blond hair.
Angel.
Lenora gasped and tried to pull back, but she was lying flat on the deck. Angel looked away from her for a few seconds, her eyes darting here and there, fiercely intelligent and plainly mad. Lenora took several deep breaths before the Mage looked back down at her.
“You’re hurting,” the Mage said. Her voice was smooth, yet deep with darkest knowledge. Snakes of shadow twisted around her head, out of her eyes, into her mouth, tails of dark magic exuded from her mind and inhaled once again.
Lenora could not speak.
“You fought bravely, and your hate remains rich. I’ll save you from death and make you better. And if we have a future, you will be a part of it.”
Lenora tried to speak, but the pain from her burning shoulder seemed to have paralyzed her throat and mouth. She could do nothing as Angel leaned down and kissed her. She felt something sliding down her throat-truly alien, malformed and yet reveling in its existence-and her fresh awareness took a massive leap outward.
As she passed into unconsciousness Lenora saw Angel stand above her and move away. And for an instant, it felt as though she knew everything.
THE SHIP WASstill on fire when she next awoke. Someone had dragged her to the edge of the deck and leaned her unceremoniously against the gunwale, and burning timbers and sheets of flaming sails drifted down around her. Somebody screamed, someone else shouted and a snake of Krotes stood across the deck, passing buckets to and fro in an attempt to douse the flames.
Lenora went to help, but she could not even stand. Her shoulder was a knot of agony, but when she looked at it she was surprised to see that the wound was no longer open. The agony was a memory of pain. She could no longer feel whatever the Mage had given her, but she sensed that it was inside her still, a shred of Angel’s dark magic coiled around her heart. She was glad, but petrified. She had no idea what the future would bring.
A mast collapsed, people screamed as they were trapped and burned beneath it, and then the world suddenly changed.
Those not affected by the fires cried out in unison.
Lenora screamed.
Angel, somewhere out of sight, let out a wail that cracked timber, ruptured ears and blasted seabirds from the sky, dead.
“Oh, in the name of the Black,” Lenora whispered, falling to the deck and scratching at the cracked wood. If she could have opened one of those cracks with her nails she would have gladly fallen through.
The wind that had been edging them away from Noreela died, and the dozen Krote ships bobbed helplessly in the currents. Clouds broke apart, a huge water spout formed and shattered one of the vessels to pieces, dead fish bobbed to the sea’s surface, some as small as a human’s finger, several almost as large as one of the ships. Their bodies ruptured and burst from the sudden exposure to daylight, and their insides were already rotten and rank.
Lenora thought of her daughter, and every minute that had passed since that miscarriage in sight of the Kang Kang mountains was wasted, hopeless, a travesty of existence. She cried, and the tears were bitter and hot. For a while she could barely breathe. It was as if something that had once breathed for her had suddenly been taken away.
“What?” she cried, “What?” But she was only echoing what everyone else was asking, and for that simplest of questions there was no easy answer.
The whole world shrugged and shivered, and when it stilled it was a lesser place.
MAGIC HAD WITHDRAWNitself from Noreela, leaving behind a vacuum of hopelessness and despair.
Many Krotes threw themselves overboard, giving themselves to the sea and the creatures that lived below its surface. Others drank poisons or fell on their swords. Lenora crawled across the deck, but by the time she reached the burning sail she had intended wrapping herself in, the flames had withered.
The Mages vanished from view. The next time anyone saw them was ten days later, when strong winds had carried them to an icy shore far to the north.
LENORA, SITTING ASTRIDEher hawk’s neck and remembering that distant past, still shivered at the memory of magic’s retreat. It had taken a long time for them to shake off the hopelessness that had descended across the whole of the surviving Krote fleet. And it had taken three hundred years for magic to show its face again.
This time, the Mages would have it for their own.
TREY WAS UNABLEto sleep. He was traumatized by what had happened, stunned awake by the simple conviction that none of it was possible. His mother could not be dead, Sonda could not be dead, their underground community must surely still be there, going about its business and wondering, in bars and shops and the square where the puppeteer played his plays, just where Trey Barossa had gone.
But as he watched the sun rise in the east he knew that it was true. All the pain, the suffering, the anguish was as obvious to him now as the cool dawn. The redness bleeding out between the mountains hurt his eyes and he turned his back to the sunrise to watch Alishia.
Since falling and banging her head she had turned strange. He thought she may have fractured her skull. The bump was not huge and it had hardly bled, but from that moment, after passing out for just a few minutes and then waking shouting and dancing and laughing, she had been all but comatose. Her eyes were open and her lips moved, making no sound. She sat up straight, hands on her knees, fingers flexing every now and then as if to work stiffness from the joints. But she said nothing, and she seemed unaware of his presence.